News & Events

Pianist Sarah Cahill will perform on the final day of Grand Piano Weekend, the three-day season finale of the second annual Sri Moonshine Music Series, curated by composer Terry Riley on Sunday, August 27, 2017 at 3pm at the Camptonville Performing Arts Center (15333 Cleveland Ave). Cahill will perform works by Riley including Fandango on the […]

In celebration of composer Lou Harrison’s 2017 centennial, pianist Sarah Cahill will perform concerts of his music spanning half a century, as well as music by his close friends and colleagues, in a nationwide tour to cities including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Miami, Cleveland, Orlando, Maui, Chicago, and more. Her concerts will range from […]

Pianist Sarah Cahill is featured in The San Diego Union Tribune ahead of her concert at the Fresh Sound Music Series, which takes place Friday, November 4, 7:30pm at Bread & Salt. The San Diego Union Tribune writes, “She brings an inviting eloquence and visceral impact to anything she performs. She also digs as deep as necessary to […]

The San Francisco Orchestra has come up with a Vegas-like way to attract a younger audience: a nightclub built underneath the orchestra’s main concert hall with a state-of-the-art sound system, high-tech lighting and artistic video images. (April 23) AP Watch the Video at USA Today

SoundBox, the San Francisco Symphony’s attempt to draw in a younger crowd with late-evening, monthly concerts in a nightclub style setting, has been successful on a scale that probably nobody ever imagined. The Meyer Sound System has transformed an acoustically dead rehearsal stage at the back of Davies Hall into a reverberant concert hall, the […]

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“A leading light of the new-music piano scene…”

– The New York Times

Pianist, Writer, Producer

Sarah Cahill

Sarah Cahill, recently called “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by the New York Times and “a brilliant and charismatic advocate for modern and contemporary composers” by Time Out New York, has commissioned, premiered, and recorded numerous compositions for solo piano. Composers who have dedicated works to her include John Adams, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Pauline Oliveros, Yoko Ono, and Ingram Marshall, and she has also premiered pieces by Lou Harrison, Julia Wolfe, Toshi Ichiyanagi, George Lewis, Leo Ornstein, and many others.

“a brilliant and charismatic advocate for modern and contemporary composers”

Cahill has researched and recorded music by the important early 20th-century American modernists Henry Cowell and Ruth Crawford, and has commissioned a number of new pieces in tribute to their enduring influence. She enjoys working closely with composers, musicologists, and scholars to prepare scores for performance.

Recent appearances include a concert at San Quentin of the music Henry Cowell wrote while incarcerated there, four performances at the San Francisco Symphony’s Soundbox, a residency at the Noguchi Museum, and concerts at Le Poisson Rouge and the Italian Academy in New York. She performs as a duo with violinist Kate Stenberg and has performed chamber music with the Alexander String Quartet, New Century Chamber Orchestra, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, and many other chamber groups. Performance highlights for the 2017-18 season include the Interlochen Arts Festival, Mendocino Music Festival, the Cleveland Museum of Art, concerts in Tokyo and Fukuoka, Terry Riley’s Sri Moonshine series, and New Music Miami.

Sarah Cahill’s discography includes over twenty albums on the New Albion, CRI, New World, Tzadik, Albany, Innova, Cold Blue, Other Minds, Pinna, and Irritable Hedgehog labels. Her 2013 release A Sweeter Music (Other Minds) featured musical reflections on war by eighteen composer/activists, commissioned especially for the album. In 2015, Pinna Records released her two-CD set of Mamoru Fujieda’s Patterns of Plants, a fusion of nature and technology created by identifying the musical patterns in the electrical impulses of plants. Cahill’s four-CD box set, Eighty Trips Around the Sun: Music by and for Terry Riley, was released in 2017 on the Irritable Hedgehog label and features Riley’s solo and four-hand works (with Regina Myers and Samuel Carl Adams) and eight world premiere recordings of commissioned works in honor of his 80th birthday.

“fiercely gifted”

Calendar

Ethos NewSound Festival

Sarah performs works by Meredith Monk, Ursula Mamlok, George Lewis, Ingram Marshall, Samuel Adams, Annea Lockwood and others, and also leads a piano recital seminar master class and reads works by students.

Wed

28

Mar

2018

New Music Miami

Miami Beach Urban Studios, 420 Lincoln Rd, Miami Beach, FL 33139

Sarah premieres new works by Orlando Garcia and Jacob Sudol and also performs music by Lou Harrison, Tania Leon, Meredith Monk, and others.

Fri

06

Apr

2018

Sat

07

Apr

2018

Bard Music West: The World of Henry Cowell

Noe Valley Ministry, 1021 Sanchez St. (at 23rd), San Francisco, CA

Bard Music West returns to Noe Valley Ministry with a deep dive into the world of Bay Area visionary Henry Cowell. Sarah performs Cowell's High Color, John Cage's Bacchanale for prepared piano, Dane Rudhyar's Stars, and works by Johanna Beyer.

More information

Sat

07

Apr

2018

New Music Works: Because

7:30 pm

Peace United Church of Christ, 900 High St, Santa Cruz, CA

New Music Works presents Because, a chamber program featuring music by Akinele Bankole, John Thomas, John Lennon/Paul McCartney, Frank Pesci, and Jon Scoville.

We’re inviting back to San Francisco some of the superstars — Anne Waldman, Clark Coolidge, and others — and we’re bringing Enzo Minarelli from Italy, Jaap Blonk from Holland, Sten Sandell from Sweden, Tone Åse and Ottar Ormstad from Norway, Taras Mashtalir from Russia by way of New York, and a host of younger sound poets to make a joyful noise for all to celebrate. We’ll also pay tribute to departed masters, with rare performances of Bernard Heidsieck’s La Poinçonneuse and the original four-channel tape of Åke Hodell’s presciently political classic Mr. Smith in Rhodesia.

“a sterling Bay Area pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde”

Revolutions Per Minute

R.P.M. on KALW RADIO
San Francisco 91.7 FM

Sunday Nights from 8-10PM

Sarah Cahill is a pianist and music critic whose radio program was named
“One of the Hundred Best Things in the Bay Area” by Citysearch online magazine.
Sarah now joins KALW, and her new program, called “Revolutions Per Minute,” focuses on
the relationships between classical music and new music, encompassing
interviews with musicians and composers, historical performances, and
exciting recordings outside the mainstream.

From the Archive

RADICAL CONNECTIONS: MEREDITH MONK AND BJÖRK

If you go to your local record store, you’ll find Meredith Monk and Björk in completely separate categories, but as you’re about to hear, they’ve got a lot in common. Born a generation apart, both women have gained a reputation for creating adventurous music for the human voice, work that has taken them beyond the concert stage and into the realms of theater, film, visual art, dance, and performance art. Over the course of this hour-long program, these two artists share personal stories and trade ideas about music alongside illustrative samples drawn from their extensive recorded catalogues.

RADICAL CONNECTIONS: ELLIOTT CARTER AND PHIL LESH

Curious how Elliott Carter, one of our most venerable composers of music for the concert hall, and Phil Lesh, best known as the bass player for the Grateful Dead, ever crossed paths? Though you might not ordinarily connect these two composers, there are some surprising musical links between them, supported by a friendship of many years.

Hear them speak with Sarah Cahill about their shared influences and the personal connections they’ve made through music.

Sarah Cahill on Lou Harrison’s Piano Concerto

Sarah Cahill plays Delta 88 (Shinji Eshima)

Published on Aug 20, 2013 Old First Concerts San Francisco, CA August 2, 2013

Sarah Cahill Rhythmicana (Henry Cowell)

Published on Aug 20, 2013 Old First Concerts San Francisco, CA August 2, 2013

Sarah Cahill Glass Houses No 7 (Ann Southam)

Published on Aug 20, 2013 Old First Concerts San Francisco, CA August 2, 2013

“Apart from being an exceptional pianist and muse to scores of inventive composers, Sarah Cahill is a first-rate communicator who specializes in connecting the music she plays to broader streams of everyday life.”